The benefits of customer insights in retail
Don't lose sight of your customer. The benefits of customer insights in retail!
These are exciting times to be a marketer. Never have we had so much and so fast access to technical solutions and evolutions, to masses of information from our customers.
And yet it strikes me that more and more marketers are losing sight of their customers, distracted by the tsunami of technical innovations. Short-term objectives but certainly also lack of knowledge and moderate interest in dealing structurally with customer insights are also causing a dead end for marketers.
Obesity Digitalisatis
Many retailers have been focusing on digitization in recent years. In doing so, they mirror pure online players and forget to play to their own strengths. They forget the fact that they are face-to-face with all their customers in physical storefronts on a daily basis, while that is precisely where they can offer much more added value to the service-seeking customer. After all, it's a race from one promotion to another, day+0 deliveries, accepting 70% returns, ...
Customer loyalty is bought off and no longer earned with genuine, authentic service and communication. However customer-centric businesses win loyalty and loyalty is what drives your business! It is high time for traditional retailers to turn the tide by using actionable customer insights. This will allow them to personalize their marketing campaigns ( tailored to each customer) and thus drive growth.
Performance Marketing
Retailers these days are forced to digitize. In the realm of marketing, this equates to doing away with everything old school. Forget that "reach" is the only standard! The more (potential) consumers you can reach via social media, mobile or email the better? On the contrary. Have you already done the test, deployed different channels and measured the effect?
Performance marketing it will be. With this we measure not only the reach, but also how many consumers respond to your communication (content, proposal, ...) and especially what the return is for your brand. Return can be sales but also donations, engagement, ... metrics that are bottom line important for your business to survive.
Note : good things are made to last. Direct mailing is one of those.I hear you say, an expensive medium when you consider the cost per contact. It can never be made profitable if you write to ALL customers. Yet it is an insanely impactful and profitable channel if you target e.g. your best 30% customers. No digital channel can compete with that.
Either way it is a process of searching and testing where most retailers have yet to face the challenge: namely, feeling the need to capture knowledge around behavioral data from consumers and translate it into actionable insights. Golden tip, get guidance from insights-driven marketing companies.
Without data you're just another person with an opinion
W. Edwards Deming
Board Responsibilty
Does your company have marketing performance metrics that are discussed monthly on the board? ... I thought so. According to Gartner, less than 10% of companies have a 360-degree customer view, and only 5% use this view to systematically grow their business. Company management should not be blind to this. Marketing has long since ceased to be an expense since the insights-driven approach. However, more than half of the board knows precious little about their own customers, let alone their behavior. An insights-driven marketing approach can only succeed if it is supported company-wide. High time to take responsibility here.
Take action
Typically, retailers rely on one-size-fits-all promotional programs that send reminders to all customers every 30 days. Correctly implemented customer insights can just help you determine which of its customers store more frequently, which store less frequently and which are "one-time customers. This makes implementing bv a much more precise churn prevention program based buying behavior of customers.
Customer insights also open the door to analytics that can predict the Lifetime Value of customers, allowing you to strategically and highly targeted investments in targeting high-value customers across marketing channels.
However you use your customer insights, the most important thing is to take action. Basing certain decisions on data-driven insights is always better than not basing decisions on data-driven insights.
Not all data is equal
In general, a "customer insight" is any observed, inferred or predicted metric that describes a customer's behavior. What makes an insight relevant, however, is the extent to which it can be used to inform a brand's marketing decisions.
The idea of aggregating, cleaning and merging all your many disparate data sources into one cohesive 360-degree view of each of your customers seems like an option. But you don't need a complete view of all your customers to get started. The most meaningful interactions you need as a retailer are purchase data. Purchases are the most meaningful indicators of customer interest and intent....
As you become more sophisticated in using the data, you may need additional data for a specific tactic.